On October 3, 1991, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, held a press conference in Little Rock, Arkansas to announce that he was officially running as a candidate to be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.
In his speech that day, Clinton used the phrase “the forgotten middle class” – and it is now often credited to him in quotation books and websites.
Indeed, Clinton liked the phrase so much he used it three times in his October 3, 1991 speech.
At the beginning, after thanking his wife Hillary, his daughter Chelsea and his friends and supporters, he said:
“All of you, in different ways, have brought me here today, to step beyond a life and a job I love, to make a commitment to a larger cause: preserving the American Dream; restoring the hopes of the forgotten middle class; reclaiming the future for our children.”
In the middle of the speech, Clinton said:
“Together I believe we can provide leadership that will restore the American dream – that will fight for the forgotten middle class.”
Finally, he closed by saying:
“This is not just a campaign for the Presidency – it is a campaign for the future, for the forgotten hard-working middle class families of America who deserve a government that fights for them.”
After that, Clinton used and reused “the forgotten middle class” many times in his stump speeches on the way to winning the Democratic nomination and then the presidential election of November 1992.
So, it’s no wonder that his use of the phrase is famous. But he didn’t coin it.
Democratic politician Alfonse D’Amato used the slogan, “A Fighter for the Forgotten Middle Class” in his successful 1980 campaign to win a New York Senate seat.
Before that, in 1977, “the forgotten middle class” was used in newspaper interviews by Pat Caddell, the pollster and political strategist for then Democratic Presidential Candidate Jimmy Carter.
Before that, it was used by a number of other politicians and candidates in the 1960s.
And, of course, “the forgotten middle class” was inspired by a similar rhetorical phrase made famous in the early 1930s by Franklin D. Roosevelt: “the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.”
But, we’re not quite at the bottom of the quote pyramid yet.
Roosevelt’s famed phrase was inspired by the term “the forgotten man” – a term coined by Yale social scientist William Graham Sumner in his 1883 book What Social Classes Owe to Each Other.
Sumner may also have been inspired by some earlier phrase, but if I knew what it was I’ve forgotten it.
Here are some of the other famous quotes and phrases linked to October 3:
• “Dig for Victory.” – World War II slogan used to urge British citizens to plant gardens to increase food supplies, first used by British politician Reginald Dorman-Smith in a radio broadcast on October 3, 1939. The slogan helped inspire the term “Victory gardens” in America after the U.S. entered the war.
• “I'm [Name]. Fly me.” (e.g., “I’m Cheryl. Fly me.”) - The famously suggestive ad slogan used by National Airlines in the 1970s. According to the company's trademark filing for the slogan, it was first used in commerce on October 3, 1971.
